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Thursday, April 30, 2015

This weekend the VOA Radiogram broadcast Saturday at
1600-1630 UTC moves to the new frequency of 17870 kHz. This
replaces 17860 kHz, which was suffering interference from Radio Exterior de
España on 17855 kHz. For those of you using low cost radios with less
selectivity, please let me know in 17870 kHz provides enough separation from
17855 kHz.

VOA Radiogram begins this weekend with a rather lengthy but, I
hope, interesting story about a new report on world press freedom.

Here is the lineup for VOA Radiogram, program 109, 2-3
May 2015, all in MFSK32 except where noted:

The Mighty KBC
will (I think) transmit a minute of MFSK64 3 May at about 0130 UTC
(Saturday 9:30 pm EDT) on new 9925 kHz (via Germany). Reports
to Eric: themightykbc@gmail.com .

Thank you for your reception reports
for last weekend's broadcast. I have not yet finished answering all the reports
from program 107, 18-19 April 2015, because of a busy week involving my audience
research tasks for VOA and the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau. I hope to
catch up with the correspondence this weekend.

If you need a current stamp list or supply list, I can email it to you. Stamp list now shows the countries with their own international forever stamps that I have in stock. Stamp list now highlights a few that offer priority and non-priority international mailing options.

NEWS: UK, version 2.0...Now supplying the 20g rate of 1,33 instead of 10g ww rate of 1,00. A few customers mention their UK contacts sometimes say 10g rate not enuf for some heavy weight QSLs. Stamps are valid for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's good to list the specific "country" when you order as I have UK stamps with country emblems on them and ur dx contact would appreciate seeing that...much like a dxer in Philadelphia would like to see a Liberty Bell stamp. Units will be made up with 2 x 1st (their forever stamp, 63p) plus a 7p stamp. Selling price of $1.90 will remain. Hopefully, I won't hear the bogus complaint that 1st stamps can't be used on international mail....

Fax Number dropped. 22 yr old fax machine finally went. Things just don't last anymore. Probably received about five fax orders during the past 12 months. I don't think I'll bother replacing it.

NEW RATES:
Jersey now 85p for 20g and 75p for 10g. I'll supply the 20g rate now.
Isle of Man increases May 5th: 1,24 for 20g

NEW PRICES:

IN STOCK AGAIN: Argentina and South Korea

STAMPS ON BACK ORDER: Algeria, Fiji, Morocco.

BACK ORDERS will now be sent with your next stamp order, unless I have several to send you. Am losing money by sending out one at a time. Sorry.

The Trans World Radio (TWR) Nepal team visited the affected areas to better
understand the situation, and will continue to visit other affected areas over
the next several days. To address the long-term spiritual and emotional needs,
TWR will produce a 15-minute program in Nepali to be broadcast once a day, seven
days a week over 15 FM stations in the affected districts.

TWR will also produce a one-hour program with four 15-minute segments in
Nepali, Hindi, Bhojpuri, and English. The programs will be broadcast once a day,
seven days a week, over shortwave from Guam to reach those closer to Mount
Everest, where they may not be able to receive FM broadcasts.

TWR would like to distribute at least 5,000 radios in the region to replace
those that may have been damaged or lost in the quake.

WASHINGTON - Changes in the relationship between the United States and Cuba may
have resulted in a relaxation on travel and trade restrictions, but they have
not diminished the censorship and media control on the island. Leadership of the
Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which manages Radio and TV Martí, described the
realities of the evolving Cuban media market to the Broadcasting Board of
Governors at its meeting today in Washington, D.C.

"Human
rights are abused every day, access to information is limited and heavily
controlled, and all media is owned and operated by the state," explained Natalia
Crujeiras, Chief Content Officer for all the all the media platforms of the
Martís including Martinoticias.com. "Cuban officials dealing with the White
House may have changed the tone of the conversations, but the Castro discourse
and relentless media campaigns haven't budged on the island."

The
Martís are providing much needed reliable
journalism on multiple platforms. According to a recent survey, 20 percent of Cubans get their
news from Radio Martí. In the first three
months of 2015, Martinoticias.com received 1.7 million hits. The Martís' following has grown by 71% on Facebook and 23%
on Twitter.

"Cuba
is a country in transition," explained Carlos García-Pérez,
Director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. "We have to think long-term. We may
not know where the chips are going to fall, and but we have to be ready to help
the Cuban citizens get the information they need to live healthy, successful
lives. And we are ready."

BBG
Chairman Shell agreed, adding, "Our work in Cuba is important, perhaps now more
than ever. Some may think our work there is done, but in many ways our work is
just beginning."

Despite
these challenges, Shell explained, "We are committed to the pursuit of global
press freedom and upholding the principles of professional journalism across our
networks."

Prior
to the presentation by OCB, Shell expressed gratitude to departing Voice of
America Director David Ensor saying, "David has steered the VOA ship through
rocky waters and a rapidly changing media environment. It is a big loss for us,
and as one of the longest serving VOA Directors, he will be missed."

After
the meeting, Shell invited former BBG Chairman and current President and CEO of
the Aspen Institute Walter Isaacson to share insights on changes in the media
and political landscapes and how they impact the future of U.S. international
media.

"Everyone
in U.S. international media really deserves a heck of a lot of credit for being
so dedicated to this mission, believing that if we report the truth it will
benefit people around the world," Isaacson told the assembled journalists, staff
and leadership. "Being here today is my tiny way of saying how valuable your
mission is and how much I appreciate work that you are doing."

Back
nearly 20 years ago, William Matthews in Columbus Ohio was on the air with a
regular DX report for both Adventist World Radio and also Radio Korea
International. On the occasion of the
200th
edition
of his DX Report over Radio Korea International, arrangements were made for a
relay of the AWR DX program Wavescan via the RKI network of shortwave stations
in South Korea.

For the occasion, AWR obtained a
quantity of QSL cards that had been previously in use by the Korean language
Voice of Prophecy in Seoul to verify their broadcasts over Adventist World
Radio. These full color picture cards
depicted tourist scenes in South Korea and they were duly rubber stamped in
honor of the occasion.

Christian Ghibaudo in France heard
the one day only AWR-RKI broadcasts over the Radio Korea International transmitter
at Kimje in South Korea with 250 kW on 6480 kHz. His QSL card showed a temple scene in South
Korea.

During
the past three-fourths century,
the BBC Far Eastern Relay Station has been on the air shortwave from four
consecutive locations; Jurong Singapore, Ekala Ceylon, Tebrau Malaysia and back
again to Singapore this time at Kranji.
In our program today, we relate the very interesting story about their
30 year venture amidst the rubber plantations and jungles at the southern edge
of the Malay Peninsula.

Quite soon after the end of World
War II in Asia, the BBC in London sent Mr. F. C. McLean on a preliminary search
for a suitable location for a relay station in the Malay Peninsula. At the time, the BBC was on the air from the
new shortwave station that had been constructed at Jurong on Singapore island
during the Japanese occupation.

Initially, the BBC was interested in
enlarging the Jurong station with the installation of high powered transmitters
and tall antenna towers. However the
Malay government, with Singapore as the capital city at the time, was planning
a huge international airport nearby and tall towers could not be
permitted.

Thus the BBC needed to look
elsewhere for their big new shortwave station and they chose the nearby Malay
Peninsula. In the meantime, they took
out a temporary relay via the new shortwave station that had recently been
opened at Ekala in Ceylon.

In July 1947, a team of three from
the BBC in London finally chose the Tebrau site as the most suitable of the various
possible venues they had visited. Their
new estate of 450 acres of jungle and rubber tree plantations had no access
road, nor any ambient infrastructure; and there were still some leftover
Japanese ammunition dumps in the area.

The design for this new shortwave
station was quite similar to the recently constructed Ekala station in Ceylon,
and the original complement of electronic equipment at Tebrau would include 6
transmitters and 20 antenna systems. In
addition, it was necessary to build up a self-contained set of housing and
amenities, including recreational facilities, for all of the staff who would be
employed at the station. Work on this
massive new radio station and all of its additional accessories began quite
quickly, and the installation of the electronic equipment in the transmitter
building began in mid 1950.

At this stage, two transmitters at
100 kW each were installed, and they had both served the BBC at two different
locations in the United Kingdom during the conflict in Europe; Start Point in
England and Lisnagarvey in Northern Ireland.
In order to safeguard the BBC’s capability of international radio
coverage during the war, two widely dispersed shortwave stations had been
constructed as additional alternatives to the huge well known station at
Daventry, just in case that one should be damaged in an aerial attack.

A 100 kW Marconi transmitter model
no. SWB18 was co-sited with the mediumwave station located at Start Point on
the south coast of England. This
transmitter had been under construction at the time for an unstated foreign
government, but when war breakout in the middle of last century, it was taken
over for use by the BBC at Start Point.

This shortwave transmitter was on
the air on only one frequency 6075 kHz under the channel callsign GRR. The informative book BBC Engineering tells us
that usage of this transmitter was terminated at the end of the year 1945, and
it was “placed
under dust sheets”.

Over at Lisnagarvey near Belfast,
another Marconi transmitter at 100 kW, same model SWB18, was co-sited with a
mediumwave transmitter and inaugurated on November 20, 1941 under the channel
callsign GRW. This unit was also on the
air on only one channel, variously listed as 6140 or 6145 kHz.

Interestingly, an international
radio monitor in Australia noted that both units, GRR & GRW, were “heard
in team”;
that is, they carried parallel programming.
This station in Northern Ireland was silenced on May 26, 1946, and the
same book, BBC Engineering, states that it was “put
under care and maintenance”.

The events of radio history suggest
to us that it was these two transmitters that were duly re-installed in the new
BBC station at Tebrau in Malaya. The
first was re-activated in December 1950, and the second was re-activated a
month later, in January of the following year, 1951.

In addition, four new Marconi
transmitters at 7½kW model SWB11E were installed at
Tebrau and at least some of these units were placed in service on May 13,
1951. A program relay for various
language areas of Asia was transferred from BBC Ekala Ceylon to BBC Tebrau
Malaya.

Power for the Tebrau station was
generated locally with three huge diesel engines. The feeder lines from the transmitters to the
antenna systems were clustered more than a mile long, and they gave the
appearance of a huge highway running through the dense forest of jungle trees.

BBC programming was phased out via
Ekala and transferred in stages to Tebrau beginning at the end of the year
1950. The final BBC broadcasts from
Ekala ended on May 12, 1951.

Some 20 years later, a modernization
plan was implemented at Tebrau, in the early 1970s, and the 4 low powered
transmitters at 7½kW were removed and replaced by 4 @
100 kW and 4 @ 250 kW. However, the 2
older units at 100 kW were still retained, though they were not included in
official lists.

However, when the time
approached for the expiry of the license for the station, it became clear that
it would be necessary for the BBC Far Eastern Relay Station to move once
again. All 8 of the new transmitters
were moved consecutively to a new station at Kranji on the island of Singapore,
and the Tebrau station was finally closed on Sunday March 18, 1979.

The BBC Far Eastern Relay Station at
Tebrau was heard far and wide during its 30 years of service; and yes, in its
earlier years of on air activity, special QSL cards verifying the reception of
this station were issued from the BBC headquarters in London. In addition, for those who were official BBC
monitors, the BBC would type in the brief QSL details, using one of their
standard acknowledgment cards.

Next in this story on the BBC Far
Eastern Relay Station, we will pick up the events once again, as they occurred
on the island of Singapore some 35 years ago.
You will hear this information here in Wavescan on another occasion,
some time soon.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

French Radio in the South Pacific - New Caledonia, Another American Radio Station

In
this edition of Wavescan, we complete our four part story of radio broadcasting
in New Caledonia, the French Island in the South Pacific. In particular, we present the brief story of
another American radio station in New Caledonia, together with information
about the various QSL cards and letters that were issued over the years,
beginning with the original shortwave broadcasting station FK8AA way back
before the middle of last century.

With the influx of American
personnel into the South Pacific during the Pacific War, many American shortwave
communication stations were established in many different locations. All of these stations were installed at
temporary locations and most were moved with the forces as they moved
northwards.

It
was in the year 1942 that an American shortwave communication station was
installed in Noumea, the capital city of the French colonial administration on
the island of New Caledonia. This
station, which was located in suburban Anse Vata, was allocated an American army
callsign, WVJN, and it was inaugurated for communication service on May 14
(1942).

At that stage, General Douglas
MacArthur had established his headquarters in Brisbane Australia and his
station WTO communicated in high speed Morse Code with the army station in
Hawaii WTJ, and also with the new Noumea station WVJN in manual Morse
Code. However, the sophisticated army
communication station WVY at the Presidio in San Francisco expressed difficulty
in Morse communication with Noumea WVJN and at one stage refused to accept
messages in manual Morse Code from them.

During the years 1943 and 1944, army
station WVJN in Noumea was noted by international radio monitors in both
Australia and the United States with the broadcast of radio programming for
nationwide relay on mediumwave in the United States. According to the monitoring reports,
the signal was heard at a low level, indicating that the transmitter power must
have been quite low.

For example, South Pacific
Headquarters New Caledonia was heard on 15410 kHz with a program insert for the
NBC Army Hour on November 28, 1943.
Another similar broadcast was noted on 15490 kHz a couple of months
later; and again on 17785 kHz in August (1944).

The original (1942) transmitter site
for American army radio WVJN was located in suburban Noumea. but it is
understood that the transmitter station was moved to the American air force
base at Tontouta a year later. The
station was closed in 1945 or 1946 when American forces left New Caledonia and
moved north.

The noted American radio historian,
Jerry Berg of suburban Boston, advises that the CPRV QSL Collection holds a QSL
letter from the American Expeditionary Station in Noumea, verifying the
reception of a shortwave broadcast on 15460 kHz in April 1944. It would seem that the programming was
produced in the Red Cross studios of the AFRS station WVUS and that it was
broadcast over the American army communication station WVJN. The QSL letter was signed by the American
serviceman Paul Masterson who, it is known, was on duty with WVUS in Noumea at
the time.

We should also mention that a radio
unit was operated in New Caledonia by the National Broadcasting Service of New
Zealand during the Pacific War. This
unit was stationed in Noumea from April 1943 to August 1944 and it produced
programming for local broadcast and also for re-broadcast back home in New
Zealand.

During its year and a half service
in Noumea, this NZNBS radio unit produced a daily program, the Kiwi Hour, which
was broadcast by Radio Noumea. Another
regular program was prepared in Noumea under the title With the Boys Overseas
and this was forwarded by plane to New Zealand twice weekly for re-broadcast
over the NZNBS mediumwave network throughout New Zealand.

In August 1944, the radio equipment
was donated to Radio Noumea, and the personnel returned to their homeland, New
Zealand.

We come now to the story of other
QSL cards and letters from the radio stations in New Caledonia. The amateur radio broadcaster FK8AA issued
its own QSL card that was suitable for verifying both amateur QSO contacts as
well as radio program broadcasts. This
QSL card presented a simple QSL text, and international radio monitors in the
pre-war era complained that it was just as hard to obtain a QSL card from the
station as it was to actually hear the station.

The communication stations FZM,
operated by their PT&T department, and FUJ operated by their navy, have
been known to sign and rubber stamp a prepared QSL card. Then also the government radio station Radio
Noumea has issued at least three different QSL cards during its more than half
a century of radio program broadcasting.

The early cards in the 1950s were a
plain text card, in two consecutive printing styles; and in the 1970s, a more
elaborate card was issued showing a tower with radiating circles. In more recent time, Radio Noumea verified
with a form letter showing a map of the island with a list of their mediumwave
and shortwave transmitters.

Back in the 1980s, international
radio monitors in Australia and New Zealand noted that an AWR program was on
the air from the shortwave station in Noumea, New Caledonia. According to reception reports regarding
these broadcasts, this program was produced in the La Voix de l’Esperance radio studio in Paris
France, the same studio that produced programming for broadcast by Adventist
World Radio.

The programs broadcasts from Radio
Noumea on 3355 kHz & 7170 kHz were not under the direct oversight of
Adventist World Radio, though the content and programming was just the
same. Several courtesy QSL cards were
issued from the AWR office in Southern Asia verifying these Pacific Island
broadcasts.

The Indianapolis Heritage Collection
contains two of these QSL cards, dated November 5 and November 23, 1982. The QSL card itself showed the orange colored
world map that was issued by the original AWR-Asia in Poona India. The QSL information was neatly typed, and the
cards were neatly signed by Jose Jacob during the time when he was serving as a
volunteer with Adventist World Radio in Poona.

That concludes our four episodes on
the story of radio broadcasting on the French island of New Caledonia in the
South Pacific. This complete story included information on the amateur radio
broadcasting station FK8AA. Around the
same era, there were two other shortwave stations with similar callings; FO8AA
in Tahiti in the South Pacific and FG8AA in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Coming soon here in Wavescan, we plan to
present the story of both of these unique amateur shortwave radio broadcasting
stations, FO8AA & FG8AA.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Ask any radio monitor what information they consider important during any
monitoring session, and usually two items will top their list: frequencies and
call signs. If you can hear activity on a particular frequency, unless you can
fully identify the participants transmitting on that frequency, you can’t fully
appreciate or document the traffic you are hearing.

With
millions of radio stations furnishing a variety of communication services
throughout the world, it is necessary that their transmissions carry
distinctive call signs or identifiers. Call signs have a four-fold purpose:
They may identify the nationality of the station, the agency operating a
particular station, the type of station, and the identity of each individual
station being heard on the monitored frequency.

The
need for station identifications/call signs can easily be illustrated here in
the United States, which leads all other countries in the use of the radio
spectrum, that now has some 85 different kinds of radio services operated by
the government, military and civilians entities, providing air, sea, land and
space communication services. There are hundreds of thousands of stations on
the air and call signs and other forms of identification help the radio monitor
sort through the various stations that are heard.

A
call sign is defined as any combination of alphanumeric characters or phonetically
pronounceable characters (trigraph), which identifies a communications
facility, a command, an authority, an activity or unit. To aid the radio
monitor in their listening endeavors, the International
Call Sign Handbook series of books/e-books has been published.

Teak Publishing is pleased to
announce their latest Kindle e-book -- the
fourth edition of International Call Sign Handbook. This e-book
represents the most comprehensive collection of military and government station
identifications ever published for the radio listening hobby. It is the result
of year’s research, study and monitoring the HF/VHF/UHF radio spectrum, by the
author. Many different radio monitoring disciplines have been used to compile
the listings in this book. If you monitor the HF, VHF or UHF radio spectrum,
there is something in this book for you.

The
information presented in this book has also been gathered through personal
correspondence, material published in the former Monitoring Times
magazine, various radio publications, newsletters, public domain government and
private internet web sites, but most have been gathered the old fashioned way
via on-the-air monitoring. In addition, we have received generous support and
contributions from many individuals in the radio hobby.

In
addition to international and military/government tactical call signs, other
types of identifiers such as Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) and Mode-S aircraft
addresses have been included in this e-book. There is a chapter that had basic
introductory material, as well as chapters devoted to call sign / words used by
the Department of Defense including the US. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and
Marine Corps. There are sections that cover the various Military Auxiliary
Radio Services and the U.S. Air Force Civil Air Patrol auxiliary service.

There
is also a chapter that covers call signs and ALE identifiers for the U.S. Coast
Guard service. Sections in that chapter include a Coast Guard aircraft fleet
list, miscellaneous U.S. coast guard calls, and also their international call
signs.

Another
large chapter covers various U.S. Government call signs. Sections in this
chapter include the U.S. Custom and Border Patrol COTHEN radio system and ALE
address list, plus call signs from the following department and agencies -
Department of Commerce (DOC), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of the
Interior (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Justice (DOJ),
Department of State, Department of Transportation, Department of Veterans
Affairs (DVA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Environmental Protection
Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Federal Communications Commission, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), General Services Administration (GSA),
Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), Miscellaneous
Listings, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National
Communications System (NCS), and U.S. Marshal Service (USMS) service.

One
of the larger chapters is devoted to an international / worldwide call signs
list. We have a sampling of government and military call signs from 75 counties
and international agencies.

The
latest craze in aircraft military is decoding Mode-S/ICAO24 radio signals and
is included in this book. Our list in this edition covers primarily government
/ military aircraft and introductory material on Mode-S monitoring.

The
last chapter of this book contains a large list of resource information, useful
in interpreting the individual entries listed in the book. Sections on U.S.
Navy ship/squadron classifications; U.S. Coast Guard cutter designators; a
massive list of abbreviations and acronyms that appear in the book; a
comprehensive country abbreviation list; and the latest Table of Allocations of
International Call signs from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
are included in the last chapter on the e-book.

The
Teak
Publishing 4th International Call Sign Handbook is now
available for purchase worldwide from Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VV7NR1U. The price for this e-Book
edition is US$6.99. This book is being released internationally. Amazon
customers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France Spain, Italy, Japan, India,
Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia can order the e-Book from Amazon websites
directly servicing these countries. All other countries can use the regular
Amazon.com website.

You
do not need to own a Kindle reader to read Amazon e-book publications. You can
read any Kindle book with Amazon’s free reading apps. There are free Kindle
reading apps for the Kindle Cloud Reader, Smartphones (iPhone, iTouch, Android,
Windows Phone and Blackberry); computer platforms (Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8
and Mac); Tablets (iPad, Android and Windows 8), and, of course, all of the
Kindle family of readers including the Kindle Fire series. A Kindle e-book
allows you to buy your book once and read it anywhere. You can find additional
details on these apps at this link on the Amazon website at www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771.

About the Author

Amazon bestselling author, Larry Van Horn, a
native of San Antonio, Texas, started his radio listening hobby in 1964, when
he received his first shortwave receiver.

In
1971 Larry joined the U.S. Navy and served on U.S. naval warships and in the
naval aviation community until his retirement in 1993. He retired in New
Orleans with the rank of Chief Petty Officer.

He
was first licensed as an amateur radio operator in 1973 with the call sign
WH6INU. Later, Larry upgraded to General Class and spent his early ham days
operating out of the famed KH6SP ham shack in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with his
his ham mentor and friend Butch Weber, WA4GIF, chasing DX and contesting.

Now
a licensed Extra Class ham, holding the call sign N5FPW, Larry enjoys operating
digital modes, contesting and chasing DX. Other aspects of the radio hobby that
he enjoys include monitoring military communications (throughout the radio
spectrum), federal government monitoring, chasing HF utility communications,
satellite monitoring, and AM, FM and TV broadcast DXing.

Larry
worked for Grove Enterprises in Brasstown, North Carolina, the publisher of Monitoring
Times and Satellite Times magazines. His job on the MT staff was the magazines assistant / technical editor and staff
journalist. He wrote for Monitoring Times magazine as a
freelance writer and full-time staffer for over 30 years until that publication
closed in 2013. Larry was the creative force behind a new publication Satellite
Times magazine, and was the magazine’s managing editor, a position he
held for more than five years.

He
has written dozens of radio equipment reviews and several monthly columns in
the pages of the former Monitoring Times including the Signals from Space, Utility World, Fedcom – Federal Monitoring column, Milcom- a military monitoring column,
GlobalNet, First Look/MT Equipment/Book
Reviews. Service Search, Ask Larry, and the magazine’s Whats New column.

Over
the years Larry has also written 10 radio hobby books (some with multiple
editions), dozens of magazine features, and numerous technical articles for a
wide variety of communications publications and radio hobby club newsletters.

He
currently resides in western North Carolina, with his wife Gayle W4GVH. They
have one son, Loyd W4LVH, who is married and lives in South Carolina.

Larry
is the founder and president of the Teak Publishing Company based in western
North Carolina. His first e-book published under the Teak Publishing banner,
the North American Enroute Aviation
Guide, was an immediate Amazon #1 Best Selling Kindle eBook.

Let
us take an interesting story from a recent issue of an American club magazine
about a lonely radio studio in an isolated area of Africa and we adapt it for
broadcast on radio. This story, about a
radio production studio operated by Adventist World Radio, was provided by
Ralph Perry in Wheaton Illinois and it is found in the NASWA Journal for
February earlier this year.

The small city of Maroua is located
in the far north of the country of Cameroon in Africa and it is the regional
capital with a population of less than a quarter million. There is a small regional airport nearby and
mail delivery in the area is described as spotty.

For many years now, Adventist World
Radio has operated a small radio production studio in the building that serves
as the headquarters for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the northern area
of the Cameroons. Programming in this
studio is produced in the widely spoken Fulfulde language and over the years it
has been broadcast over various stations that give radio coverage into the
Fulfulde language areas, including the usage of Meyerton in South Africa.

Radio coverage for the Fulfulde
programming during this past shortwave Transmission Period B14 has been
provided by the Deutsche Welle shortwave station located a little north of
Kigali in Rwanda. However, as was
announced quite recently, this powerful Deutsche Welle relay station is closing
over this weekend, at the time of transition from the B14 to the A15
Transmission Period.

The director of the Cameroon AWR
studio in Maroua, Pastor H. T. Richard, states his appreciation in receiving a
letter from a shortwave listener in the United States who heard his programming
via DW Kigali. He also states that the
studio is quite small and quite simple, though plans are underway for location
in another building with updated studio equipment.

It is intended also that live
programming will then be added for broadcast locally to the Maroua city
area. However, until the new studio
becomes available, only programming for broadcast in the international
scheduling from Adventist World Radio will be produced.

We might add that somewhere around
75 production studios around the world are affiliated with Adventist World
Radio. Some of these studios are quite
large and turning out programming in many languages whereas others are quite
small and working in only one language.

If fellow DXers are making contact
directly with AWR production studios, we would suggest that care should be
taken in the these matters, remembering that the staff may not understand the
circumstances associated with international radio monitoring and the nature of
QSLs. Even though English is the
international working language of the Adventist denomination, yet not all radio
staff may be able to communicate in English.

Then too, it is possible that
finances may be quite tight in some locations, and the cost of posting mail,
perhaps even registered mail in order to secure assurance of delivery, may be
very high in the local currency.
Remember too, that some of the production studios are located in sensitive
areas of the world where the staff has to be very careful about international
contacts

At
the beginning of March, an important radio event was held in Port Blair, the
capital city of the Andaman Islands.
This radio event was a large international amateur radio convention
lasting nearly two weeks, and the initial venue was the Hotel Megapode Nest. Hamtec 2015 was held for two days, March 6
& 7, and the following ten days were given to lectures and presentations
about the many varied aspects of amateur radio operating and activity.

This event was organized by NIAR the
National Institute of Amateur Radio in Hyderabad, India, and two special
callsigns were issued for the occasion; VU4A for foreign amateur radio
operators who were visiting for the occasion, and VU4I for Indian amateur radio
operators from the Indian mainland.
Among the NIAR officials visiting Port Blair for this occasion, was Jose
Jacob VU2JOS, who also provided us with an update on the radio and TV scene in
the Andaman Islands.

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands
are a long chain of 572 tropical islands that extend for a distance of some 600
miles, though only 36 are inhabited.
They are located in the Bay of Bengal on the edge of the Indian Ocean,
and they are a territory belong to the Republic of India. The total population is a little over ⅓rd
million, with Port Blair as the capital city, and the only city in the entire
island cluster.

Some of the small primitive tribes
living on isolated islands prefer to remain in isolation without any contact
with the outside world. Some of these
languages have not been identified and the relationship to other known languages
is to this day completely unknown.

Port Blair is located on the east
coast of South Andaman Island. It is the
administrative center for both sections of the island cluster, the Andamans and
the Nicobars, and it is developing into a recognized tourist destination.

The original inhabitants of the
Andaman Islands are aboriginal peoples whose origins and languages are not
fully substantiated. It is thought that
they arrived more than 2,000 years ago and until European exploration of Asia
and the Pacific took place, they lived in almost complete isolation. Occasional early travelers, such as the
famous Marco Polo and others, described the islanders as very primitive,
practicing a form of cannibalism.

The British came in 1789 and they
established a settlement at what is now Port Blair, on South Andaman
Island. The islands were occupied by the
Japanese for two and half years beginning in March 1942.

The first wireless station in the
Andaman Islands was installed by the British in Port Blair just before the
beginning of World War 1 and it was on the air in Morse Code under the callsign
ROB. Callsigns for early wireless
stations in the eastern area of what was greater India under the British raj
all began with the twin letters RO.
After the war, the call in Port Bair was amended to VTP.

The first radio broadcasting station
installed in Port Blair was a 1 kW mediumwave unit operating on 1440 kHz. The transmitter was located in the studio
building at suburban Dilanipur which was built on an 8 acre property on an
elevated area.

This first transmitter was a
Japanese NEC Model No. MB122 and it was officially inaugurated on August 15,
1959. When the mediumwave band in Asia
and elsewhere was changed from 10 kHz spacing to 9 kHz on November 23, 1978, Port
Blair remained on the same 1440 kHz.

In 1975, an additional transmitter
facility was constructed for All India Radio on a 40 acre property at
Brookshabad, 10 miles south from the studio building. Two 10 kW Indian made transmitters Model
HMB104 were installed and these were inaugurated on

November 6, 1975.

The original frequency was 680 kHz
and this was modified to 684 kHz under the 9 kHz spacing in 1984. At this stage, the original 1 kW unit was taken into alternative
programming, though subsequently it was in use only for emergency purposes,
including as a studio to transmitter program link when needed. This unit was removed from service and
dismantled in November 2004 and it was replaced in t5he same space by an FM
transmitter.

In order to provide adequate
coverage to distant islands in the Andamans & Nicobars, a Japanese 10 kW
NEC shortwave transmitter Model HFB7840 was installed with a dipole antenna
system beamed north & south. A
lengthy series of drawn out test broadcasts began in September 1988, and it was
taken into full service on March 11, 1989.
Test frequencies back then were 4760 kHz, 6000 kHz, 7180 kHz & 9690
kHz, though 4760 kHz & 7115 kHz became its standard frequencies.

Fourteen years later, one of the
exciters developed a fault, and the transmitter power was dropped back to 4
kW. A specially made Indian exciter was
installed in January of the following year (2004) and the transmitter power was
then increased to 8½kW.

In 1992 an additional studio
building was constructed on the hill top property adjacent to the older
building. The total staff at AIR Port
Blair in all areas of activity these days is a little more than 100, and they
produce programming in the national and local languages.

A new 100 kW mediumwave transmitter
manufactured by Thales in Switzerland was commissioned on the same 684 kHz
channel in May 2003, and the twin 10 kW units were retained for standby
usage. A 10 kW Nautel FM transmitter was
installed at the studio premises in Dilanipur for direct broadcast of the VB
Vividh Bharati network programming during the following year (2004).

During the disastrous earthquake and
tsunami of 2005, AIR Port Blair carried special emergency programming. When power was not available locally and the
station was off the air, a 250 kW shortwave transmitter in Delhi carried
special programing beamed to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.